


Chance Meetings

by bedlamsbard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 20:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3396131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Better to lose the braid than to lose your head, little one."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chance Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> I promised [dyingsighs](http://dyingsighs.tumblr.com/) Caleb (later Kanan) having to cut his own padawan braid in the aftermath of Order 66, and here we are.

Caleb huddled in the folds of his cloak as though he could lose himself in it. Despite the heavy fabric and the ambient warmth of the cantina, all he could feel was an icy cold, as if all the light and all the life had been leached out of the galaxy, leaving behind only a shadow. Maybe it had.

He couldn’t stop replaying the events of the last few days over and over again in his mind. It was all that he saw when he closed his eyes, and when he tried to sleep, his dreams echoed with the sound of blasterfire. _Caleb – I’ll be right behind you._ But she hadn’t been, but and when Caleb had looked back, it had been just in time to see –

His mind shied violently away from the memory. “There is no death, there is the Force,” he mumbled to himself, but he had said the words so many times in the past few days, let alone the year he had been fighting in the war before then, that they had lost all meaning. “There is no emotion, there is p-peace, there is –”

“Child, if you do not wish to draw attention to yourself, then you shouldn’t mutter.”

Caleb jerked his head up, fumbling inside his cloak for the hilt of his lightsaber, but the Zabrak woman who had spoken didn’t seem hostile. She dropped down into the booth beside him, picking up the mug on the table and sniffing at it critically. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

“It’s just blue milk,” Caleb protested, aggrieved, then edged away from her on the bench. “What do you want?” Belatedly, an idea occurred to him, and he said quickly, “I’m not, um, for –”

“Children aren’t my taste, little Jedi,” said the Zabrak. She rested an elbow on the table, cupping her chin in the palm of her hand as she studied him.

Caleb flinched. “How did you know –”

“I have seen Jedi before,” she said, then leaned over and tugged his padawan braid out from beneath his hood. “You should cut this.”

He snatched the braid back from her. “I need this! I’m still – I haven’t been knighted yet. I can’t cut it.”

“Mmm-hmm. Better to lose the braid than to lose your head, little one.” The Zabrak tapped her fingers against her jaw. “You chose this cantina well. Most Kedorzhans are too near-sighted to see anything in this light, and the others are all from species notoriously bad at telling one human from another. That was good thinking.”

Caleb shrugged a little. He pulled the folds of his cloak more tightly around himself with his free hand, keeping his other on his lightsaber. “Who are you? What do you want?” He hesitated. “Are you looking for me?”

“Not for you in particular.”

Caleb studied her from under lowered eyelids. She was younger than he had thought initially, much younger than Master Depa was – had been – and she sat the way most Jedi sat, with her eyes constantly flicking across the room as if evaluating it for threats. She had a blaster carbine slung across her back, bigger than even most Coruscanti thugs carried casually, and from that he made a cautious guess. “You’re a bounty hunter!”

She raised her free hand dismissively. “On occasion.”

He felt his grip tighten on his lightsaber, even though he knew that he probably couldn’t take an experienced bounty hunter in close quarters at the best of his ability, let alone now. “Are you –” He stumbled over the words.

“I don’t kill children, little one,” she said.

Caleb swallowed, his throat painfully dry, and made himself say, “The bounty’s for dead or alive. You don’t have to kill me. You just have to catch me.” It was probably stupid to push his luck this way, but it wasn’t like he had anything left to lose. _Just your life, and what’s that worth these days? Not a Confederate credit._

Except Master Depa had – so he could –

Caleb held his lightsaber so tightly that he could feel the ridges on the hilt digging into his palm.

The bounty hunter swirled his cup of blue milk around, studying the liquid inside. Sounding irritated, she said, “I don’t kill children, and I don’t turn them over to be killed. You’re lucky it was me who found you, young one.”

“I’m not so young anymore.”

She flicked her gaze up towards him. “No.” She put the cup down and leaned back in the booth, stretching her legs out beneath the table. “What are we going to do with you?”

Caleb stiffened at the plural, looking around the cantina. Even though he didn’t have much personal experience with them, he knew that bounty hunters often worked in teams, permanent or otherwise, and if she was here distracting him, trying to lure him into complacency so that one of her partners could get the drop on him –

“Are you just planning to talk about how you’re not like any other mercenary?” he said, his voice shaking a little. “ _You_ won’t, but one of your friends –”

“You Jedi. Always so eager to think the worst of people.” She leaned forward suddenly, and Caleb flinched back.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he managed to say.

“You? No. But you aren’t the first Jedi I’ve ever met.”

She sounded a little sad about that, and Caleb swallowed back his raw nerves and took a chance. “Are you looking for him? Your friend?”

“Friend is a strong word. So is looking.”

“He’s probably dead,” Caleb said before he could stop himself. He looked down at the table, scuffing one of his heels against the battered floor, and wondered if he knew the Knight she was looking for. “Everyone else is.”

“Not everyone.” The bounty hunter tapped her fingers on her jaw. “It isn’t wise to still be on Coruscant, young one.”

“There’s a moratorium on offworld travel,” Caleb said; the spaceport had been the first place he had gone, once he had been able to think straight. Well. Think straighter, anyway.

“Don’t I know it,” she murmured. “Child, a word of advice. If you don’t want to be taken for a Jedi, then stop looking like one.” She flicked a finger at him. “Hide your lightsaber, change your clothes, your cloak – and cut your braid.”

Caleb’s hand flew to his braid and he gripped it tightly. “I –” A Jedi didn’t have attachments. But this was different, because it wasn’t an attachment, it was _him_ , it was what made him a padawan, and not just anyone else on the street.

Except that was what he needed to be right now. Someone else on the street, because being a padawan was a death sentence.

He swallowed again, running his braid through his fingers, tugging at it so hard that it hurt. “I don’t have anything to cut it with except my lightsaber.”

The bounty hunter gave him an approving look, then pulled the ring-knife off her belt and held it out to him hilt-first. Caleb had to let go of his lightsaber to reach for it, and his hand was shaking when he tried to take it, so that he nearly dropped it onto the table. The bounty hunter closed both her hands over his, holding on until Caleb had mostly stopped shaking.

“One stroke,” she said, letting go of him. “Do it fast. Don’t hesitate. And don’t cut yourself; the Kedorzhans in here will smell the blood.”

Caleb nodded, his heart pounding unsteadily. He had to shake his hood back to do so, getting the knife behind his right ear, as close to the base of his braid as he could manage. His hands felt frozen – everything felt frozen. _I don’t want to do this._ It felt a little like giving up, and Jedi never gave up. The only Jedi who lost their braids before they were knighted were the ones who weren’t Jedi anymore, and Caleb was still a Jedi.

 _Master, I’m sorry,_ he thought, and pulled the knife forward as quickly as he could, forcing himself not to flinch away so that it didn’t clip his ear. The braid came loose in his hand and Caleb stared at it blankly, still not really comprehending what he had just done until the bounty hunter whisked it out of his palm.

“Wait,” he protested. “That’s –”

“No good to you now,” she said. She looked down at it for a moment, then wrapped it around her fingers into a neat coil before tucking it away in her belt.

Caleb swallowed. His head felt curiously light, even though he knew that there probably wasn’t enough of a difference in weight for him to notice the loss. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Turn it in for the bounty, of course.”

He blinked. For some reason he hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh. Um, won’t they…want a body?”

“Who wants to haul a body halfway across the planet? You’re small, but it’s still too much trouble. Bodies raise so many questions, even for bounty hunters.”

“Oh,” Caleb said again. He touched the empty spot behind his ear, then looked down and realized that he was still holding the bounty hunter’s knife. As he tried to hand it back to her, she waved him off, then fumbled at her belt for a moment before pushing the sheath across the table.

“Keep it,” she said.

“Jedi don’t –”

Zabraks didn’t have eyebrows to raise the way humans did, but they did something similar with their brow ridges. Caleb looked down, blushing, and took the sheath, fitting the knife into it slowly. “Thank you,” he said, because he had been raised to be polite. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with a knife – he did know how to knife-fight, but he had never actually had to do so outside of the practice rooms in the Temple – but at least it was a weapon that wasn’t his lightsaber.

“Don’t mention it,” said the bounty hunter. She studied him silently as Caleb pulled his hood back up.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked her after a moment.

“I told you. You’re not the first Jedi I’ve ever known. And I don’t like bullies.”

Caleb fingered the ring-knife’s hilt. “I hope you find him. Your friend.”

“I told you, young one, he’s not my friend and I’m not looking.” She started to get up as Caleb sat there, holding the knife and feeling lost.

“What do I do now?” The words slipped out before he could help himself, and he flushed a little as she looked back at him.

“Run, little Jedi,” she said. “Run away and never come back.”


End file.
